MY interest in Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger, who rebelled against Queen Mary in January-February 1554, led me to The historie of Wyates rebellion (December 1554) by John Proctor, a Kentish schoolmaster who was an eyewitness of many of the events he describes. But Proctor himself admitted that his Historie was not the first printed account of Wyatt's rebellion. In his dedicatory epistle to Queen Mary he refers to ‘a printed book late[ly] set forth at Canterbury', from Which either of haste or of purpose [important matters] were omitted'. Proctor's modern editor, unable to identify the earlier book, gave to the page bearing Proctor's epistle the running title ‘The Lost History of Wyatt's Rebellion'. It was from this point that I began my search for the lost history.
